Wired News: How ‘Gamification’ Can Make Your Customer Service Worse

They call it gamification. The idea is to take familiar aspects of electronic games and apply them to customer support software and other applications used in the business world. This often involves awarding points for tasks and some sort of system for turning those points into other rewards, like a “badge” attached to your online profile or perhaps prizes or bonus pay.

As Sierra points out, gamification replaces an intrinsic reward with an extrinsic one. In other words, it shifts a participant’s motivation from doing something because it is inherently rewarding to doing it for some other reason that isn’t as meaningful. This, she says, is ultimately less motivating…